Just got caught up on this thread, which I've been avoiding. As a clerk who is surrounded by mgmt at all times at DFW, I have a lot of insight here. OP is right, mgmt declared that new loads would take priority and old volume was delivered last, meaning the people who got their box late got it really, really late.
This is another "wall of text" but here are some details from different angles.
The mgmt sent to help operations were from all over the country. I was shoulder-to-shoulder with a guy from Michigan and a guy from California. None of the mgmt folks shipped in seemed to be able to do anything complicated or difficult so we gave them easy jobs, or set them up in a human chain to break up tasks into smaller bits. This wasn't a big deal because sometimes drivers who are injured or in rehab have to work in operations and they suck at actual work as well. Big time. So we let 5 of them do 1 job and it worked out, but it wasn't enough to matter. A few of them began to catch on that our local mgmt are pretty stupid and they would quietly show their disgust - I enjoyed those moments.
The ice storm was not the reason for any of it. It was a perfect storm, a combination of Amazon having recently opened several buildings in the area including its major distribution center, the company having not done anything at all to prepare for peak beyond the normal "hire a couple dozen temps for each shift" strategy, a lot of drivers moving slowly because they've been so harassed that they don't care anymore, and some other things. Really the Amazon warehouse was not the big problem for DFW preload so much as all the individual residential stops were, honestly. It was like UPS did not at all consider that shopping for gifts online is a thing that more and more people are doing these days.
My manager, the week previous to the disaster, spent a lot of her time lying to her bosses. I witnessed some of it personally. Honestly if mgmt would stop lying to each other and kissing each others' asses, more work would be accomplished.
People from corporate were visiting quite a bit after the hell began. Some of them walked in angry but left smiling, having chapped up their backsides adequately.
The local hall gave up doing much of anything. Safety became a nonissue. A few people out on injuries were called and asked to come help and the smart ones said no and hung up but the hall, which already does nothing for injured people, did not stop the company from bringing in people who were unfit to work.
We had members of mgmt working so hard they lost weight. Some among them were literally sick from the stress. Mid-level mgmt was threatening to fire everyone on down the chain and my pt sup vomited in front of me, he has child support to pay and he doesn't need a pile of people in ties all blaming him for what has been the peak that outdid our previous peak record for daily volume by ten times over.
I worked a couple 70 hour weeks as a part-time employee, only doing my shift's work and not even covering elsewhere as I had the option to. My preload sort was given a 20 minute break each day while working 12 hours, some people working up to 16. Drivers were returning to the hub from their route as we were already started up the following morning. I don't understand how the company expected the drivers to make residential deliveries in the middle of the night but it happened.
A lot of our regional contracts have bailed on us this past couple of years because even on our best days the service quality is simply terrible. It became clear after a while that some of our contracts only existed because UPS had written in some long math for breaking contract before its natural expiration - some companies can't afford to stop using UPS. And UPS tied in its other logistics and supply chain services which those companies rely on. It's downright evil.
While talking to some members of management about specific numbers, such as trailers, total daily volume, etc., I got different numbers from each of them. It became clear that a lot of them were lying to their superiors about just how bad it was, and spent the rest of peak trying to cover their tracks.
Our hub maxed out for trucks twice over. We had no room to park any more package cars and they still kept bringing in more. Mesquite was holding all the trailers for the whole area, and Mesquite was already screwed, being one of the least safe and most harassed hubs I have ever failed to imagine. One member of mgmt was telling me about how the local news stations were flocking the Mesquite operation all day and night hoping to catch some disgruntled employees for interviews. I asked him if he had seen how it looked for himself and he showed me a picture of an explosion on his cell phone.
The most memorable thing about this complete failure of a peak for me, other than all the overtime cash, has been the moment my manager began screaming over the radio for everyone to stop touching boxes, stop touching boxes. The lower mgmt ignored it for a while and finally the manager knew she had lost the reins. She stopped screaming finally and said rather hauntingly, "Everyone get a scanner. We're going to mark all of these as weather delay. Stop moving packages, leave them where they are, just scan them in before you leave and we'll process them tomorrow before the unload starts."
Moments later I was starting an argument with the members of mgmt in the vicinity about what we had just heard and they all were all too quick to do as they were told. Honestly if I ever need a picture of a nutless toadie I will use a picture of a member of lower mgmt at UPS. Sure enough, a couple days after the ice storm which didn't really affect our local deliveries (only the feed that was yet to arrive), we began the habit of putting in anything left in building as a weather delay. And so the company didn't really lose a lot of money on customer compensation, it was a smart grift.
My manager retired a few weeks ago. It was planned ahead of time, the company didn't interfere.
Today my local management still all say there is no solution to another peak like that. If you start with the "we should put another hub in Frisco, or Lewisville or Grapevine," they begin the "there is no money for that," talk. There has been a rumor that corporate is putting together plans for a few extra satellites and another major feeder hub in the metroplex but just as many members of management claim there is no such activity and we need no help, we can do it just like we always have.
